That Berkman Center “exposé”…
Updated with new information about the Microsoft grant, see below.
My personal nerdosphere of interest (that’s the Berkman Center/Harvard Law School quadrant of the cyberlaw sector of the whole sort of general technology mish-mash) has been lit up the last few days, following the Daily Beast’s publication of an essay on Harvard’s Berkman Center and Prof. Jonathan Zittrain. A lot of the commentary, from people I know and people I don’t, has condemn the article and its author, one Emily Brill. The article relates to conflicts of interest, so I should admit mine up front: I just graduated from HLS, made a lot of connections with the Berkman Center, and (although we’re not close) did enough work with JZ to regard him as a brilliant professor and a great human being. In spite of all this, I thought there were enough potentially valid points in the essay to warrant mention, and I thought I’d take a minute away from bar review to do so here. read on
A cynical take on Justice Alito’s lone dissent in U.S. v. Stevens
An apparently liberal dissent from a decision today invalidating a law forbidding depictions of animal cruelty, yet one that not even Justice Stevens could join, even though Stevens voted to uphold a flag-burning law challenged on First Amendment grounds and even though he’s announced his retirement? A lengthy dissent written even after Alito would have known that he was going it alone? A dissent from the conservative justice most recently in the news for gainsaying Obama at the State of the Union?
If I were a cynical man, I’d say this is less the latest in a consistent First Amendment jurisprudence or a courageous defense of animal rights, and more a custom-ordered talking point for the Sunday morning talking heads. “What do you mean Obama is entitled to pick a justice as liberal as Bush’s justices were conservative? Look at Alito just this week!”
Status
- My guitar's finally upgraded and playable! http://grab.by/6a9j (thanks, Dad) 2 days ago
Asides
- Quick note: I revamped the guitar tab section of the site. I noticed that my old subdomain had stopped working, so one new WP extension and much messing around in .htaccess later, I present to you http://danray.org/guitar-tabs/. Now substantially less ugly! #
- Just a note to say I've added a Zipcar affiliate link to my list. If you're signing up, using my link will give each of us $25. #
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This is good. David Foster Wallace, writing for Harper's in 2001, covers the Usage Wars and standard written English, in (of course) his own idiolect (which idiolect1 (q.v. Infinite Jest) makes the hard parts go down easier). Wallace was a walking liberal arts education. #
- In the context of the below, here's a small patch for Mark Grabanski's amazing "Clean Calendar" — a lightweight, pop-up calendar for selecting dates on web forms. My edits forbid users from selecting dates in the past. #
